Stars: Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Freeman, Colin Hanks, Allison Tolman Writer: Noah Hawley, series created by Noah Hawley, based on the feature film FARGO written by Joel & Ethan Coen Director: Adam Bernstein Network: FX, Tuesdays @ 10 PM Original Airdate: April 15, 2014 The 1996 feature film FARGO, a deadpan dark comedy about a bumbling Minnesota businessman and a crime gone terribly wrong, won Oscars for Frances McDormand’s lead performance as a hard to flap small-town sheriff investigating the crime and for the original screenplay by writers/directors Joel and Ethan Coen. FX’s new limited series FARGO, adapted for TV ...Read On »

The 1996 feature film FARGO, a deadpan dark comedy about a bumbling Minnesota businessman and a crime gone terribly wrong, won Oscars for Frances McDormand’s lead performance as a hard to flap small-town sheriff investigating the crime and for the original screenplay by writers/directors Joel and Ethan Coen.

FX’s new limited series FARGO, adapted for TV by Noah Hawley, does a notably good job of capturing the feature’s tone of dark whimsy that ever-so-carefully treads a tightrope of contempt, pity and (for the good guys) genuine admiration without repeating the first film’s storyline or characters.

Here, we start out with professional hit man Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton) who runs into a snag – and off the road – outside the small town of Bemidji, Minnesota. One of Bemidji’s most put-upon residents is hapless insurance salesman Lester Nygaard (Martin Freeman, the English actor known for the HOBBIT films and as Watson on the SHERLOCK series) who winds up in the emergency room waiting room. Malvo sizes him up, sits next to him and offers to kill one of Lester’s chief tormentors. Lester doesn’t say yes, but he doesn’t say no. This sets quite a few wheels in motion. Other parties involved include chipper, observant sheriff’s deputy Molly Solverson (Allison Tolman) and Duluth, Minnesota police officer Gus Grimly (Colin Hanks).

Apart from an odd encounter with Malvo, we can’t tell how Gus will fit into the larger picture, but there are good clues informing us of how the rest of FARGO will fit together; it could be a mislead, but we sense the organized crime aspects will come together before too long. There is certainly method in Malvo’s malice, although we can see he’s got a sense of pure mischief as well, what with setting people on each other’s tails simply because they annoy him.Thornton has the whole charming-to-terrifying sliding scale down to an art form in this. He’s evil but charismatic, and when he’s up against bullies, it’s easy to root for him, even if he’s a murderer and his adversaries are not.

Freeman does a fine job with the Scandinavian-tinged, folksy Minnesota accent. He shows us the flinching defeatism behind the bland, pleasant exterior, and we feel a little sympathy for him, but he’s so hapless and insular that we don’t exactly like him either. Again, the actors and the show, at least in the opener, manage to stay straight on the line that keeps us curious without making us root for either of its leads.

We do like Tolman’s plucky Solverson, who is able to come to reasonable conclusions and is interested in doing the right thing; it’s also fun to see Keith Carradine in a guest shot as her dad, who wishes his daughter had a less hazardous profession. We see too little of Hanks this time around to have much sense of his character, apart that he’s got the good sense to know when to leave well alone.

What’s good about FARGO is that it’s smart and fully thought-out; we believe in the quirks of Bemidji and it doesn’t seem like anywhere else on television, albeit we could imagine Raylan Givens (who just vacated FARGO’s time slot for the season) coming in and setting things right in a way that is too orderly for this particular universe. From the evidence so far, it looks like the show and its makers know what it is, how to keep us engaged without going for sentiment and how to avoid getting too clever for the mood. Altogether, it seems like a good bet.

SHERLOCK is back on the case in his third season on PBS, Sunday at 10 PM, albeit too briefly for most fans – this Sunday’s episode, the third of the current series, is also the season finale. With Benedict Cumberbatch as the famous detective who faked his own death at the end of last season and Martin Freeman as the often irate but loyal and smart Dr. John Watson, series creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss’ present-day take on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s London sleuth has its viewers begging for more. Moffat is in attendance for a Q&A held ...Read On »

SHERLOCK is back on the case in his third season on PBS, Sunday at 10 PM, albeit too briefly for most fans – this Sunday’s episode, the third of the current series, is also the season finale. With Benedict Cumberbatch as the famous detective who faked his own death at the end of last season and Martin Freeman as the often irate but loyal and smart Dr. John Watson, series creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss’ present-day take on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s London sleuth has its viewers begging for more.

Moffat is in attendance for a Q&A held by PBS for the Television Critics Association. After the panel, the writer/producer – who is also current at the helm of the BBC’s DOCTOR WHO – sticks around for a few additional questions.

ASSIGNMENT X: Would you say that your Sherlock goes through more changes than he did in the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories?

STEVEN MOFFAT: You do see in the original stories and it is commented on in the original stories, that Sherlock Holmes in the middle and at the end is very different from the man we first meet, as Dr. Watson gets to know him better. So these things are there. We wouldn’t really impose that – I’m not a big fan of psychoanalyzing a character or trying to bring them up to date and make them even madder than they were in the first place. We stick pretty close to what Doyle laid down, because that really works, where every time they’ve tried to improve Sherlock Holmes, they’ve made it worse. So we stay pretty close to what it is.

AX: The women in SHERLOCK tend to be a lot more interesting than the women in Conan Doyle’s original stories, especially Watson’s fiancée/wife Mary Morstan, played by Amanda Abington …

MOFFAT: Well, it’s one of the difficulties of Sherlock Holmes, the original stories, is that what women there are aren’t that interesting. Mary’s not bad, I think, on first appearance. She’s a little bit flat, but she is at least resourceful and clever. Quite often, they’re slightly dull in the original, if I’m honest, and it works for our show to bring a female perspective onto the two boys, really. It’s always about them. It’s always about the two boys – it always will be, because that’s the nature of the show. We can’t change it, I think we’d be wrong to change it. And I think to bring a female perspective on it, I think it enriches it and it’s part of modernizing it.

AX: As a writer, do you ever have trouble coming up with cases worthy of Sherlock?

MOFFAT: Well, not so far, but we’ve only done nine. But no, not really. I mean, it’s not so much the case worthy of Sherlock as, what’s the story going to be? What’s it going to do to them? What journey do they go on? Because they’re ninety-minute films. We’re not doing sixty-minute episodes where you could have smaller, minor-key stories. Really, with SHERLOCK, we’re pretty much committed to having big stories that affect their lives. The nearest we can do is to create – like the wedding episode, in which little cases are inserted. Those little cases are the closest we get to being like Doyle in a way, because they’re little miniature stories. They tend to be short, the Sherlock Holmes stories.

AX: How many seasons of SHERLOCK do you think you’d like to do?

MOFFAT: Oh, well, you never know that in advance. If we weren’t enjoying it, or we didn’t think there was anything good left to do, we’d stop, but we haven’t reached that point yet, is all we can say. I can envision just doing it for a while – for quite a while, possibly. The fact that we only do it occasionally means it’s not swamping anyone’s schedule. Eventually, I’ll stop doing DOCTOR WHO, because it stops me doing anything else. But SHERLOCK doesn’t swamp my schedule, doesn’t swamp anyone. So I could imagine we’ll come back and do SHERLOCK fairly often for many years, rather than very often for a few years.

Ian Fleming, who famously created James Bond, was in reality a British Naval Intelligence officer during World War II. BBC America is presenting a miniseries, FLEMING: THE MAN WHO WOULD BE BOND, beginning Wednesday January 29, starring Dominic Cooper as the journalist-turned-spy-turned-author. Fleming’s love life was almost as scandalous as that of his fictional hero. He notably fell in love with Ann O’Neill, who was married to a British nobleman when they met. Lara Pulver, who made a splash as Irene Adler in SHERLOCK and is on DA VINCI’S DEMONS as Clarice Orsini, plays Ann in FLEMING. She’s present at ...Read On »

Ian Fleming, who famously created James Bond, was in reality a British Naval Intelligence officer during World War II. BBC America is presenting a miniseries, FLEMING: THE MAN WHO WOULD BE BOND, beginning Wednesday January 29, starring Dominic Cooper as the journalist-turned-spy-turned-author.

Fleming’s love life was almost as scandalous as that of his fictional hero. He notably fell in love with Ann O’Neill, who was married to a British nobleman when they met.

Lara Pulver, who made a splash as Irene Adler in SHERLOCK and is on DA VINCI’S DEMONS as Clarice Orsini, plays Ann in FLEMING. She’s present at both the Q&A session and the tea party that BBC America hosts in the garden at the Pasadena Ritz-Carlton for the Television Critics Association. At both, Pulver takes the time to talk about playing the ultimate source for Bond women.

ASSIGNMENT X: Is Ann O’Neill in fact a real person?

LARA PULVER: Yeah. Ann Fleming was the only wife of Ian Fleming.

AX: Are you back on DA VINCI’S DEMONS in Season Two as Clarice, wife of Lorenzo de Medici?

PULVER: Yes. The Medicis are very prominent in second season.

AX: You seem to play a lot of women who tread a circuitous path to what they want and are very good at getting people to do what they want. Between Irene Adler and Clarice and now Ann O’Neill. do you ever want to play somebody who’s kind of helpless and saying, “Oh, my God, what’s going on?”

PULVER: Trust me, Lara Pulver’s very vulnerable as well [laughs]. I think it’s one of those things. When SHERLOCK was such a big hit, there were so many people, when they had strong women in their TV shows, that were like, “Is Lara Pulver available to come and do this for us?” But what I loved about this was actually the writing and the period. I’d never done the 1930s-1940s period. It was just wonderful to step into a woman of that world, where women weren’t as strong as they are today and didn’t have as much say, and yet she was able to do so much and was so ahead of her time.

AX: Did the wardrobe appeal to you as well?

PULVER: What was quite extraordinary and what very much attracted to me to this project was not only the writing, but the amount of filmmakers that had come together to make this TV miniseries. Caroline Harris is our costume designer, who did 42 with Harrison Ford recently, so she’d kind of been engrossed in the 1940s period. And I had thirty hours of costume fittings in total, which is kind of unheard-of. But it’s a testament to her attention to detail and her want to make this something quite iconic. And I think what she’s achieved and accomplished is quite extraordinary. I know Dom [Cooper] was pretty much stuck in a Naval suit for the majority of the show, but Caroline specifically wanted to make my character this very spirited beacon of light throughout the entire show. Hence, we’ve got the background of the eve of the war, and Ann in true style, with her family motto being, “It’s no longer fashionable to be dull,” is wearing a canary yellow dress hosting a dinner at the Dorchester. So I think Caroline did a wonderful job of not only hitting the era, but also finding the moments of the characters throughout these episodes, and depicting their journey as well.

We also had an extraordinary cinematographer, Ed Wild, who has just done a beautiful job of making it so cinematic and beautiful. And recently I was singing his praises, having seen this, and what he managed to achieve in that time. He did the Jean-Claude Van Damme commercial, where he’s doing the splits over the Volvos. So he’s like the coolest man in the world now.

AX: Ann and Ian are very attracted to each other and have some fairly risky encounters, but it’s not very graphic …

PULVER: It’s funny, because you don’t see anything, so I’ve never felt uncomfortable.

Before I signed off on this project, I was like, “What are you doing in regards to their bedroom antics?” Because obviously I was very uncomfortable doing all that stuff. And when I knew that [FLEMING director] Mat Whitecross and I were on the same page, and that it was about what we don’t see and it’s actually more about the journey of these two people and their dysfunction and their needs and their wounds, then I knew I would do this.

AX: Some of their behavior toward one another is rather extreme …

PULVER: Yeah, I would agree. But what was so interesting is knowing that it was consensual. She always kind of provoked him to the point of an awakening, I think. They challenged each other so much and then it got to the point where he went, “Right,” and got physical with her, and all of a sudden, something came alive in her. It was almost like this want for love, this want for affection, and then he opened a different door in her, so it was really interesting, the whole journey.

AX: How was it playing those scenes opposite Dominic Cooper?

PULVER: There was a kind of an unspoken trust, I guess. I’ve been so fortunate to work with some wonderful leading men, Dom being one of them. We didn’t have a chemistry test read before we did the job. We met at the table read, and there was an instant respect and trust of each having each other’s backs, which is so vital when you’re depicting two very volatile people such as these are, where really what you’re wanting to display and explore is their extremes. So you’re wanting to feel them at their most vulnerable and exploit them at their most aggressive. And these two people were so dysfunctional and really pushed each other’s buttons in such a way that there had to be that kind of safety net where, hopefully, Dom felt like I always had his back and vice-versa, which meant that we could do one take of a scene and I could be in absolute tears and need him to physically support me, and in the next take, a whisky glass was being thrown at his head and he was having to duck. Fortunately, he’s agile enough. You have to be very present, and that’s a gift of working with a very talented actor who has come from stage and screen such as Dom.

AX: Does FLEMING take us through Fleming’s success with the Bond novels, or does it end before that?

PULVER: We end on our honeymoon in Goldeneye, where he’s just written his very first novel, Casino Royale.

SHERLOCK is back for its third season on PBS, Sundays at 10 PM, and not a moment too soon. The series, created by Mark Gatiss & Steven Moffat from Arthur Conan Doyle’s detail-oriented British detective character, has been much missed by its fans during the long gap since the end of Season 2, which saw Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock apparently falling to his death from a rooftop, much to the grief of his friend and detecting partner Dr. John Watson (Martin Freeman). Now Sherlock is back – with an explanation of how and why he disappeared for two years and fooled ...Read On »

SHERLOCK is back for its third season on PBS, Sundays at 10 PM, and not a moment too soon. The series, created by Mark Gatiss & Steven Moffat from Arthur Conan Doyle’s detail-oriented British detective character, has been much missed by its fans during the long gap since the end of Season 2, which saw Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock apparently falling to his death from a rooftop, much to the grief of his friend and detecting partner Dr. John Watson (Martin Freeman). Now Sherlock is back – with an explanation of how and why he disappeared for two years and fooled Watson into believing he died.

Unlike Sherlock, Cumberbatch shows no signs of disappearing. The second-generation London-born actor, son of Timothy Carlton and Wanda Ventham, has a large batch of feature film performances both recently released (Khan in STAR TREK: INTO DARKNESS, slave owner Ford in 12 YEARS A SLAVE, Julian Assange in THE FIFTH ESTATE, Midwesterner Little Charles in AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY and the dragon Smaug and the Necromancer in THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG) and upcoming (Alan Turing in THE IMITATION GAME), as well as the five-part miniseries PARADE’S END as the heroic Christopher Tietjens, which aired last spring on HBO.

Cumberbatch is at PBS’ portion of the Television Critics Association press tour to talk about SHERLOCK. Following a Q&A panel, he talks to a small group of reporters about all aspects of his career.

AX: As your parents are both actors, was it inevitable that you would become an actor?

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH: No. Not at all. I tried very hard not to be. I wanted to be a barrister. [As an actor], there were low expectations of employment, peripatetic, and everyone that came towards me, trainee barristers and lawyers, were like, “Go back now while you can.”

AX: Did your parents hope that you’d become an actor?

CUMBERBATCH: No, anything but. I mean, they’d worked really, really hard to afford me an education where I could be anything but an actor. They wanted me to do something else – they were brilliant at it. They have wonderful careers – it’s ongoing – but they wanted something better for me, as all parents do for their children, and they saw the pitfalls at the end of the street and didn’t want me to suffer those, so they were very selfless and wanted me to do anything but.

AX: Is there a particular pressure in playing Sherlock, who’s meant to be the most intelligent person on Earth?

CUMBERBATCH: Is he supposed to be the most intelligent person on Earth? I think he thinks he is, but you know.

AX: Do you just rely on the script as far as depicting his brain power?

CUMBERBATCH: Yes. I’ve got one of the most intelligent scriptwriters on Earth helping out there and a couple of other [writers], so what you see on screen is just parroting his brilliance, and Doyle’s. It’s an interesting thing.

AX: Is there something you do as an actor to let us know that, “Okay, the wheels are turning” or do you just do what you’re doing and let us project?

CUMBERBATCH: I don’t know. You’ll have to look at that. I’m not my own audience enough to analyze that. I do what I do. You have an inner process and you hope that that translates, and often on film, that through the eye or the body can do that, because you’re looking in close-up, but I don’t like unpacking these things. It’s just like, what’s the point? You can look at all the magic tricks and how they’re all done and I suppose you could still enjoy putting it back together again, but I’d rather let other people do that.

AX: What’s your take on Sherlock’s status as a sex symbol, as he’s a character that doesn’t seem to be really interested in sex?

CUMBERBATCH: Non-threatening, unavailable, cruel – I mean, there are a lot of recipes to why that might be the case. I don’t know. He has a sexuality. There’s no doubt about it. It’s just he subsumes it in order to do his work. I’ve said that many times before, but the idea that he doesn’t know or hasn’t experienced sex I think is inaccurate.

AX: Can you say anything about your reported upcoming films FLYING FOREST or EVEREST or THE IMITATION GAME?

CUMBERBATCH:THE IMITATION GAME I’ve shot, and that’s happened. The other two haven’t been shot and haven’t happened, and the one that might be on at the moment for certain is THE LOST CITY OF Z, which is a James Gray picture.

AX: Is your character in LOST CITY different than ones that you’ve played before?

CUMBERBATCH: Pretty different. Pretty different. Percy [Fawcett] is an interesting character. He’s quite obsessive, he’s quite determined and strives to conquer everyone’s cynicism about thisEl Dorado, this lost city of gold that he believes exists in the Amazon. And it’s going to be really cool. It’s a brilliant filmmaker and fantastic characters.

AX: Would you consider doing an American TV series?

CUMBERBATCH: No.

AX: Why not?

CUMBERBATCH: Because if I do an English one [which has shorter seasons], there’s time – I want to do theatre and film as well as television.

AX: Do you have a favorite character that you’ve played?

CUMBERBATCH: Not really, but Christopher Tietjens [in PARADE’S END] is near it.

AX: Are there characters that you’d like to play?

CUMBERBATCH: Yeah, there are a few. There’s a fantastic character, Patrick Melrose, in a series of novels called the Patrick Melrose novels that Edward St. Aubyn has written and I believe that David Nichols is doing an adaptation as we speak of those books. He’s one of Edward’s good friends. A phenomenal character.

AX: Is there any Olympic sport that you would like to do?

CUMBERBATCH: Snow-boarding. I didn’t make it this year, sadly.

AX: Are you good at it?

CUMBERBATCH: I wouldn’t say that, but yeah. When the insurers allow it – or they don’t sometimes – I just nip off and have a go. But I do like that.

AX: With respect to Steven Moffat’s other show DOCTOR WHO, would you be averse to some sort of crossover with SHERLOCK?

CUMBERBATCH: I would be very averse to that! [laughs]

AX: What’s the best advice you’ve ever gotten?

CUMBERBATCH: The best advice I’ve ever gotten is, don’t spend too long in front of a load of journalists with Dictaphones [laughs]. I would say that’s the best advice I ever got. I’ve had a lot of good advice. Don’t go to the salmon in the buffet. I don’t know.

AX: Is there anything else you would like us to know about SHERLOCK right now?

]]>http://www.assignmentx.com/2014/interview-benedict-cumberbatch-on-sherlock/feed/2Exclusive Interview: David Bradley on AN ADVENTURE IN SPACE AND TIME and being the first Who – PART 1http://www.assignmentx.com/2013/exclusive-interview-david-bradley-on-an-adventure-in-space-and-time-and-being-the-first-who/
http://www.assignmentx.com/2013/exclusive-interview-david-bradley-on-an-adventure-in-space-and-time-and-being-the-first-who/#commentsSat, 23 Nov 2013 00:42:24 +0000ABBIE BERNSTEINhttp://www.assignmentx.com/?p=62601

British actor David Bradley has just hit a fandom trifecta (there isn’t a the fandom trifecta – there will never be just three): he was the unhappily non-magical custodian Filch in the HARRY POTTER films, he continues as the indelible Walder Frey, host of the Red Wedding, on HBO’s GAME OF THRONES, and now he’s part of the DOCTOR WHO universe. Once upon a time, hard as it may be to recall and longer ago than many Whovians have been alive, DOCTOR WHO quite simply did not exist. It was brought into being in 1963 by a team including producer ...Read On »

British actor David Bradley has just hit a fandom trifecta (there isn’t a the fandom trifecta – there will never be just three): he was the unhappily non-magical custodian Filch in the HARRY POTTER films, he continues as the indelible Walder Frey, host of the Red Wedding, on HBO’s GAME OF THRONES, and now he’s part of the DOCTOR WHO universe.

Once upon a time, hard as it may be to recall and longer ago than many Whovians have been alive, DOCTOR WHO quite simply did not exist. It was brought into being in 1963 by a team including producer Verity Lambert, director Waris Hussein and actor William Hartnell, who portrayed the First Doctor. AN ADVENTURE IN SPACE AND TIME, premiering in the U.S. on BBC America Friday, November 22 at 9 PM, chronicles the beginnings of DOCTOR WHO, starring Bradley as actor Hartnell, with Jessica Raine as Lambert and Sacha Dawan as Hussein. The special is produced by current DOCTOR WHO and SHERLOCK makers Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss from Gatiss’ script, with Moffat making a rare acting appearance as Tom Baker.

Bradley is at BBC America’s Television Critics Association and takes some time to talk about both ADVENTURE and BROADCHURCH, which aired in the U.S. earlier this year. The murder mystery starred previous DOCTOR WHO David Tennant, plus Olivia Colman, and was created by yet another Whovian veteran, writer Chris Chibnall. Bradley played Jack Marshall, a newsstand vendor with a tragic secret. FX has just announced that Bradley has been cast as vampire hunter Abraham Setrakian in its TV series adaptation of Guillermo Del Toro/Chuck Hogan’s THE STRAIN

Bradley graciously takes some time to chat about journeying back into the past to play the man who was the First Doctor – as well as portraying Frey, arguably the world’s worst host.

AX: Were you a DOCTOR WHO fan when you were a kid?

DAVID BRADLEY: Yes, I was. I remember seeing William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker. I’d go to work and we’d talk about it and the Daleks and we’d all try to do the voice, but it wasn’t like I never, ever missed an episode. I’ve never been that kind of full-on into it, like I just can’t miss it – I’ve never been like that, but I’ve always enjoyed it. I never imagined I’d be in it.

AX: With playing the scenes recreated from the original DOCTOR WHO with William Hartnell as the Doctor, did you try to do specifically what he had done, or did you try to just get the feel for the period?

BRADLEY: No, well, I didn’t think about the period so much. We just looked at endless footage on DVD of the actual episode we were recreating, through the old camera with that wonderful black-and-white grainy feeling that you can’t get with a modern camera. Our cameras were filming them filming us, so we felt it necessary to recreate every move, every camera move and every actor’s move exactly as in the episode. Because there will be some fans maybe checking it out – I’m sure a lot of them go back and look at old episodes. If you’re really into it, you go back and see how it’s done. And so we felt we had to do it justice by recreating it exactly. As far as the character of Hartnell is concerned, we didn’t have any record of him speaking as himself or interviews, things like that, so you just had to try and do the scripts justice and use what was in his life and try and be as truthful as possible. You can’t put everything in, every aspect of his life and character, because in the end, it’s not about William Hartnell, it’s a drama about the making of a program and how it came about.

AX: Had you ever worked with the real Waris Hussein, who’s been a very prolific director, especially in Britain?

BRADLEY: No. I just met him on the first read-through of ADVENTURE IN SPACE AND TIME with William Russell and Caroline Forbes from the original cast and talked to them all. They were very helpful and it was just great meeting Waris, because he watched on the monitor as we were shooting the first scene when the Doctor is walking down the corridor with the flapping cloak and the checked trousers and the boots. It’s a tracking shot and he was watching on the monitor. I think that was the first scene we shot. And Mark Gatiss was stood next to him. He looked down and just saw tears streaking down. He just obviously went back to fifty years ago, when he directed it. I can’t imagine what that must be like, seeing yourself portrayed from all that time ago.

AX: Have you always been an actor?

BRADLEY: After leaving school, I was an engineer for about eight years, working on the factory floor. I wasn’t very good at it, my heart wasn’t in it. I worked with some nice people and had some good laughs, but it was going nowhere for me. I could see my future mapped out in terms of nine-to-five whatever, clocking on and clocking off. It was a regular job. As soon as I discovered a love for acting – I did it as a non-professional. I joined youth clubs, youth groups, we did musicals and plays, and I thought, “This is what I want to do.” I just loved it.

AX: As part of the appeal of being an actor for you is the unpredictability of what you’ll be doing next, do you think that’s part of the general appeal of DOCTOR WHO, and for you personally – that the Doctor never knows what’s coming next?

BRADLEY: Yes, I think so. Yes. Because he’s constantly surprised in often very perilous situations, and you know that it’s not that he knows he’ll always survive like Superman, because he’s the Doctor. You see him just as fearful as his companions, but he always finds a way to get it through.

AX: American audiences are becoming much more aware of your work lately. Does it feel like you’re getting more breakout roles, or is it just that the U.S. is seeing more of them?

BRADLEY: Well, it’s nice – I’ve been around a long time, doing all sorts of stuff, quite a lot of theatre early on, and I’ve always enjoyed it and I certainly have as much enthusiasm for it now as I had then. But it’s really nice – it’s only been in the last few years that I’ve started doing, I suppose, from HARRY POTTER onwards, and then you think, “Oh, well, that’s my blockbuster for life,” and then this happens, and then something like BROADCHURCH and GAME OF THRONES, and you think, “Wow, what a treat to be part of all these.”

AX: What attracted you to GAME OF THRONES in the beginning?

BRADLEY: A great story. You want to do a good job, you want to be in something like that, because it’s something that’s generating so much excitement that it’s good to be a part of it.

AX: Have they told you whether or not Walder Frey will be back?

BRADLEY: Not officially. I hope I’m going back to Belfast [where GAME is shot], because he’s in the books. You never know, but I’ll find out sooner or later, and I hope I do. I look forward to it.

AX: It seems like they’ll need him back at some point to keep that storyline going …

AX: Had you read the GAME OF THRONES books, or when you got to that part in the script, did you go, “Whah!”?

BRADLEY: Well, I’ve never read the books – I haven’t had the time, because particularly in the last year or two, I’ve had loads of scripts to read and learn, and it takes me a long time to read a big chunky book like that, so I just wait until I get the scripts. But when I saw the scene, I thought, “Ooh, this is going to ruffle a few feathers.” Much more than I imagined, to be honest, the reaction to it.

AX: How was filming the Red Wedding sequence?

BRADLEY: Oh, it was great. On the day, on the welcoming scene, that long speech he had, where he’s a consummate performer, he welcomes them into the lion’s den and smiles, talks of a good night and it seems like all is forgiven and forgotten. But of course, he’s just relishing the moment of when he lets his dogs loose with their crossbows on the whole lot of them. The actual Red Wedding scene, with the slaughter and everything, took a whole week, because there were so many set-ups and so much prosthetic work to be done, with slit throats and arrows. And also, I don’t know if anyone noticed, but up in the gallery, the musicians, before they got their crossbows out, there was one guy who’d come all the way over from England at his own expense to be in it. He didn’t want to play a big part, he just wanted to be in it. He is the drummer with Coldplay. They were preparing for a big tour to I think New Zealand; he asked permission from [Chris] Martin and the band to come over because he was just crazy about GAME OF THRONES and wanted to be in it. So the director set him up in the musicians’ gallery and gave him a drum and gave him a brief close-up with the beard and the drum. So we were all thrilled. He just wanted to be in it. They gave him a non-speaking role.

AX: Which project do people tend to recognize you for most?

BRADLEY: Well, for years, it was always HARRY POTTER, but I’ve just noticed in the last few weeks with GAME OF THRONES – I never realized it had such a big audience.

AX: Have you had any interesting encounters with fans?

BRADLEY: I met a lady at Comic-Con who was dressed up as William Hartnell as the Doctor. She had the white wig on and the suit and she was actually walking around like this and she was in the crowd and I spotted her and I said, “Come here, let’s have a photo together.” So we had a picture together and compared our cloaks and scarves and everything.

AX: Does international fame feel like what you expected it to be like?

BRADLEY: I can’t remember what I expected it to be like, because I never expected it, you know? But I have to say, I’m just enjoying it, because I’m nowhere near the level where people just can’t go anywhere, have no private life. I wouldn’t like to be in a situation where I had to keep myself behind a high wall and just go out in disguise or get into a darkened car every time I go out like some people, so the level I’m at, it’s something where I can just enjoy it. Because I enjoy meeting people.

AX: Is there something else you’d like to say that hasn’t been asked this morning?

BRADLEY: I honestly can’t think of anything.

PUBLICIST: Ask how many swag bags he’s gotten.

AX: How many swag bags have you gotten since you’ve come to California?

BRADLEY: One.

AX: You’ve got to do better than that.

BRADLEY: That was in San Diego [at Comic-Con]. This is L.A. So we shall see, the Doctor says [laughs].

Giving any kind of plot summary of STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS runs more than the usual risk of spoilers. What can be said? Well, Captain Kirk (Chris Pine), Mr. Spock (Zachary Quinto) and the rest of the very dedicated crew of the Enterprise extricate themselves by the skin of their teeth out of one crisis only to be thrown into another – which is soon eclipsed by a third. All of this is in the first act.

In other words, director J.J. Abrams and the screenwriters here, Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman & Damon Lindelof leave no opportunity for a moral conundrum or mortal danger unexplored. There is a fair amount of humor, much of it thanks to having a character put into words what we’re thinking, and a lot of the kind of emotional drama that only works when viewers are invested in not just individual characters, but in how those characters interact with one another. Fortunately, for those audience members who have accepted the reboot, between longtime fondness for the characters and the worthy performances here, this will be a given for most.

Pine and Quinto unsurprisingly are the stars here. Pine doesn’t attempt to approximate William Shatner’s James T. Kirk demeanor, partly because it’s impossible to imagine anyone successfully doing it at all (at least, outside the realm of parody) and partly because it wouldn’t work in these more modern surroundings anyway. Instead, this Kirk is cocky and happy, but willing to learn and acknowledge when he’s wrong – this Kirk recognizing a mistake is more like spinning a sailboat around that rerouting an aircraft carrier. Quinto adroitly treads the fine line of making Spock fairly stoic for the most part, yet showing us when he’s irate, alarmed or anguished. When he stops being stoic, though, the filmmakers and Quinto make him arguably a little too human, especially in moments of anger.

The two other regulars here who most get the chance to shine are Zoe Saldana’s Lt. Uhura and Simon Pegg’s Mr. Scott. Uhura gets to put both her linguistic and butt-kicking skills to work, both of which Saldana does persuasively, and Pegg’s Scotty is endearing in both his energy and his principles.

As for Cumberbatch, pretty much everyone who has seen him in SHERLOCK is primed to believe this actor as someone who is brilliant and extremely physically capable.

The 3D here is usually lovely, especially when the Enterprise goes to warp speed and we go flying after it or ahead of it at what feel like genuinely great distances. We also get great depth of field in the meticulously constructed sets. The only time the process is distracting is in dialogue scenes, where we’re looking at one person’s face over another person’s shoulder – the full-face close-ups are beautiful, but the faces shown in profile in the foreground become strange wall-like surfaces sitting at the edge of the screen.

STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS is probably going to be most enjoyable to people who are not STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES purists. However, one doesn’t have to be dedicated to every detail of the original incarnation to be stunned by the occasional display of narrative chutzpah here. The new film succeeds best when it’s coming up with entirely new storylines and tactical twists. When it gets into “homage” territory, there are times when it’s intentionally funny, times when it seems like a respectful nod to what’s come before and times when you are likely to say to yourself, “Oh, no, they did not just do that.” At these moments, it seems like STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS is addressing itself to those viewers who are genuinely unfamiliar with the older TREK tales, but in that case, why all the nods to what came before? (There is at least one point in the film where we are all but instructed to re-watch the relevant material.) There are a number of recycled elements that don’t serve either new viewers (who won’t get the references) or old fans (who will see these elements as so altered that they might as well be called something else).

STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS does take pointed aim at some of the precepts of the original version (the filmmakers make a reasonable case against the Prime Directive in the first ten minutes). However, the film also maintains a running discussion, in both words and deeds, about personal responsibility, violence, and the evils of rushing to judgment in either direction, which is very in keeping with TREK’s grounding principles. This is not a resurrection or reincarnation of STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES, but it holds together pretty well as entertainment with some good philosophical notions on its mind and some worthy relationships at its heart.

The literary figure Irene Adler lives up to her surname – she is the only woman ever to addle Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective Sherlock Holmes. With that sort of power, it’s no wonder the character turns up to bedazzle and bedevil Holmes in SHERLOCK, a contemporary take on the sleuth developed by writers/producers Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat for the BBC. Season Two begins nex Sunday, May 6, on PBS at 9 PM in the U.S. (Season Two previously ran on the BBC starting New Year’s Day). Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes and Martin Freeman as his companion, Afghan war veteran John Watson, soared ...Read On »

The literary figure Irene Adler lives up to her surname – she is the only woman ever to addle Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective Sherlock Holmes. With that sort of power, it’s no wonder the character turns up to bedazzle and bedevil Holmes in SHERLOCK, a contemporary take on the sleuth developed by writers/producers Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat for the BBC. Season Two begins nex Sunday, May 6, on PBS at 9 PM in the U.S. (Season Two previously ran on the BBC starting New Year’s Day).

Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes and Martin Freeman as his companion, Afghan war veteran John Watson, soared to international popularity when they starred in SHERLOCK’s 2010 first season. Lara Pulver plays the fascinating Irene, who appears in Season Two’s debut episode, “A Scandal in Belgravia.”

Pulver has a substantial stage career in her native England. She played Isabella in the recent BBC version of ROBIN HOOD and Sookie Stackhouse’s goblin fairy godmother Claudine in TRUE BLOOD. The actress is clearly delighted with SHERLOCK and has quite a few stories from the set – some of them even concerning THE HOBBIT, which features Freeman in the title role of the young Bilbo Baggins and Cumberbatch as the dragon Smaug.

AX: Had you read a lot of Sherlock Holmes stories before you became involved with SHERLOCK?

LARA PULVER: No. I’d read some of the Conan Doyle stuff in high school, but I hadn’t touched it once. I got the project and started two days later and fortunately, Steven Moffat had written such a well-rounded character that I went into it knowing she was of American origin and there were little things that I thought if I want to work them in [it can be done], but it’s knowing that they’re there, they’re somewhere in the layers of the character that I was building.

AX: Does Irene Adler have an American accent in this?

PULVER: Oh, no, because she didn’t spend the majority of her life there, I believe.

AX: Is there any comparison between playing an otherworldly character like Claudine in TRUE BLOOD and a character like Irene, who is not literally otherworldly, but different from pretty much everybody around her?

PULVER: There’s something in them both – they’re feminists in a weird way, aren’t they? [laughs] It’s using the power of being a woman. I feel for both characters. There are similarities. I’d say [the difference is more pronounced] in TRUE BLOOD, in the sense that she wasn’t who she really was. She was of the goblin world and protecting herself [by pretending to be] a fairy. In SHERLOCK, I’m not even sure that she’s aware – I don’t know that awareness of her being different even enters her mind.

AX: Irene Adler is famously the only woman to be of interest to Sherlock Holmes. Do you and Benedict Cumberbatch play your scenes as though Sherlock is an emotional, if not a literal, virgin?

PULVER: That’s not our intention at all. I don’t want to speak on Benny’s behalf, but I don’t think that’s his intention either when he’s playing it. I think [Sherlock has] never met his match in that way, and I think other things have always preoccupied his brain. I think on the list of one to ten, sex has been at the bottom [laughs].

AX: What’s Cumberbatch like as a scene partner?

PULVER: He’s a very charming man in essence. He’s also very intelligent and he has an intensity that’s quite alluring. In anybody else, it could be so intense that it’s too much, it’s repellent. For him, it’s completely new and he cares and he’s funny. He has a great sense of humor. He’s also a public schoolboy, a British schoolboy, and I don’t mean to generalize, but he and Martin have a wonderful sense of humor. They’re both very witty, funny men. And also, you have to be at the top of your game to do a show like SHERLOCK. You can take more risks, and so he has that freedom. He has this real freedom going on. He’s a sensitive being and he’s a great guy. I can’t speak highly enough of him.

AX: Was there any discussion among the three of you about playing non-humans, since Cumberbatch is playing a dragon, Freeman is playing a hobbit and you’ve played a goblin?

PULVER: No, but there was a wonderful moment where there was a picture of an Australian tribe dancing around in the Guardian newspaper. And Ben cut it out and [the people in the photo] had these masks on one of these funny kind of feet-claw things, and he said, “Look, it’s Martin Freeman in THE HOBBIT!” So there’s a great banter on the set with that type of stuff.

AX: It seems that, especially on British television, when characters are very intelligent, they’re sometimes given some very tongue-twisting dialogue. Did you have any difficulty with any of Irene’s speeches, or did you show her intelligence by not speaking?

PULVER: Both. A lot of what Irene is is what she doesn’t say. However, I sat there in support of Benedict, who has these wonderful kind of analytical deciphering monologues that he does at amazing pace. But yeah, that’s his bag and not mine, I believe.

AX: In the course of playing Irene Adler, you had a nude scene, which you did without what are termed as “modesty garments.” There was a production reason for this …

PULVER: [SHERLOCK director Paul McGuigan) just said to me, “This is going to take so long to do, because if we’re not hitting marks exactly for every take, we can’t use it, because we’ll have [trouble matching the shots in editing if any of the protective garments show]. You’ve got a choice. We can either do that [try to avoid filming the underwear] all day, or we can get it all off and you have to completely trust us – obviously, we can’t use anything that exposes you anyway.” And yeah, that’s the choice that I made, that I was literally in shoes and earrings and lipstick. It was so weird. The first couple of takes, you’re very aware that you’re naked and it’s all that goes on in your head, and then all of a sudden, there’s something that changes the whole dynamic of the scene where I’m naked, and actually, I’m the complete power-head in the scene. I have all the power. It’s like Benedict said, it’s just a device to gain control over the most intelligent man she’s ever met. So the second you take that completely on board, it is just a device, so there will be a certain take where I turn to Martin and I would not continue the scene, because it was my line, until he looked at my breasts. Because I thought that’s what [Irene] would do. She would stand there, she would make him feel completely uncomfortable and then he would just literally give in and off he would go. It was like one-nil. It’s a complete game of chess.

AX: Did you have to do a special workout and/or anything else to prepare for the scene?

PULVER: Waxing was on the agenda. That was something we had to do. A friend of mine, Luke Evans, was in the recent IMMORTALS movie – for IMMORTALS, they put [the actors] on this training regime called Tabata, which is a form of circuit training. It’s literally just to get them lean and ripped. And I was like, “Okay, I don’t need to look gladiatorial, but quick, get me lean and ripped!” [laughs] And so he sent [the workout program] to me, and for about three weeks, I jumped on that bandwagon. And it was great, actually. Obviously, you have to do the diet with it, which was just protein and salad or protein and vegetables every three to four hours. And I did that for three weeks during the shooting of SHERLOCK. And then after I shot that scene, the naked thing, the first thing the dresser did was say, “Do you want a Snickers?” And I went, “I so want a Snickers!” [laughs] And we shared a Snickers as a celebration.

AX: You had a different kind of challenge in TRUE BLOOD, working with the goblin makeup. Did you know going into it that you were going to have to wear prosthetics at some point?

PULVER: No, no, the goblin story was developed later on and it meant I was in the [makeup] chair for three hours.

AX: Had you ever done anything like that before?

PULVER: No, I’d never used prosthetics before, and they did an amazing job.

AX: Did that have an effect on your performance, make you feel that you wanted to be bigger or smaller?

PULVER: Totally. Well, working with [TRUE BLOOD show runner] Alan Ball gives you any license to do what you want anyway [laughs], because he encourages that craziness, but it definitely gave me a theatrical license.

AX: Are you mostly based in London or Los Angeles?

PULVER: Mostly, I’m inLos Angeles. I have a house in both. It’s completely project-based, because something that’s even American can often be filmed inEurope. It’s just one of those things. Something that’s British-based can film inSouth Africa.

AX: Is there anything you do to relax during downtime while you’re working?

PULVER: After a day’s shooting, I’ll make brownies and cookies. Often I take them to the set. The crew like me [laughs]. It keeps them happy.

AX: Were you able to bake while you were on the gladiator diet, or did you have to avoid baking during that time?

PULVER: I was in a hotel room, so I didn’t have kitchen facilities in order to spoil them. A happy crew makes for a happy show, so if that means feeding their bellies, great.

AX: You’ve been working steadily for a long time, but now you’re getting more public and press attention. Does that have any effect at all on your approach to your career?

PULVER: I’m mostly just living in the moment, because [press attention] can come and go. Longevity for me is everything. I think it’s more about the craft and the work, in theU.K., for sure. The fame element, if that comes, it comes. People I think are foolish to become an actor to get famous, because it’s too hard work. If you want to get famous, go do one of these crazy reality TV shows, or whatever it is, but acting is not an easy profession, and it’s gregarious and precarious and so therefore the fame element I don’t think is a part of it. It’s work, it’s a craft. Especially for so many of us [who go back and forth] from theatre to TV to film.

AX: Is there anything else you’d like to say about SHERLOCK?

PULVER: No, not that comes off the top of my head. Just watch it. Watch it.

The music is afoot over two series (and gradually counting) of this 21st century take on Arthur Conan Doyle’s famed characters, as given the revamp mojo by the BBC’s DOCTOR WHO team to equal international acclaim, and an Emmy nomination (among the show’s many) for composers David Arnold and Michael Price. It’s elementary that these two would hip up Holmes’ sound for its new takes on such classic Doyle stories as “A Scandal in Belgravia” and “The Reichenbach Fall,” pretty much wiping away the once-traditional, solo orchestral sleuthing to combine strings with such neo-futuristic sounds as sampled percussion synth samples ...Read On »

The music is afoot over two series (and gradually counting) of this 21st century take on Arthur Conan Doyle’s famed characters, as given the revamp mojo by the BBC’s DOCTOR WHO team to equal international acclaim, and an Emmy nomination (among the show’s many) for composers David Arnold and Michael Price.

It’s elementary that these two would hip up Holmes’ sound for its new takes on such classic Doyle stories as “A Scandal in Belgravia” and “The Reichenbach Fall,” pretty much wiping away the once-traditional, solo orchestral sleuthing to combine strings with such neo-futuristic sounds as sampled percussion synth samples and an echoed piano, a fresh approach that firmly puts Sherlock and Watson into the era of modern day detective work. It’s intriguingly throbbing, invigorating stuff that bounds between the eerie and the playful, conveying the constant, deductive whirring of two brilliant minds as well as their quip-filled relationship.

Yet as determinedly present-day as Arnold and his own musical Watson make SHERLOCK, the composers are sure to bring such 19th century instruments to the fore as the cimbalom and the Holmes’ violin fixation, giving a rhythmically energetic approach to the dynamic duo that nicely links their TV Sherlock to Hans Zimmer’s steampunk vibe for the movie detective on this side of the pond. Silva Screen’s separate CD’s for Series One and Two are captivating listens, with the “best of” approach for the first album leading to suites from “Belgravia,” “Reichenbach” and “The Hounds of the Baskerville” for the second entry, music that shows Arnold and Price as getting even cleverer at bringing new, pulsating life to an iconic, trench-coated character, whilst thankfully not forgetting his legendary musical past.

Lara Pulver has just had the pleasure of working with writer and producer Steven Moffat for his new series of SHERLOCK, which will be airing in the U.S. in May. As so often happens, Mr. Moffat tends to use actors that he likes in other projects that he works on, so the question came to mind that maybe, just maybe, Ms. Pulver would find herself involved with a certain BBC long-running science fiction show called DOCTOR WHO. Here’s what the actress had to say to ASSIGNMENT X … “He may be calling me right now,” she jokes about Moffat calling ...Read On »

Lara Pulver has just had the pleasure of working with writer and producer Steven Moffat for his new series of SHERLOCK, which will be airing in the U.S. in May.

As so often happens, Mr. Moffat tends to use actors that he likes in other projects that he works on, so the question came to mind that maybe, just maybe, Ms. Pulver would find herself involved with a certain BBC long-running science fiction show called DOCTOR WHO.

Here’s what the actress had to say to ASSIGNMENT X …

“He may be calling me right now,” she jokes about Moffat calling her for a part. “We haven’t spoken about DOCTOR WHO at all. I think they are very separate entities for Steven, and I think he puts on very different hats, but I love working with him, and if we found another project to work together on whether it is DOCTOR WHO or another season of SHERLOCK, then I’m sure we’d want to work together again.”

Pulver is talented and beautiful, and since Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) is off the series with the latest season, The Doctor will be looking for a new companion. Stranger things have happened in television.

The current Second Series of the BBC/PBS co-production of SHERLOCK has been breaking records in the U.K. and even though PBS won’t air the episodes until May, talk of a third series is inevitable. While speaking at the PBS session for MASTERPIECE MYSTERY! which airs SHERLOCK under that banner, actress Lara Pulver who plays Holmes foil Irene Adler in Series 2, spoke about the show’s impact her native U.K. “It’s resonating hugely within the British audiences, which is very exciting and there’s more scope for these two characters [Holmes and Adler],” admits Pulver. As for whether Benedict Cumberbatch will return ...Read On »

The current Second Series of the BBC/PBS co-production of SHERLOCK has been breaking records in the U.K. and even though PBS won’t air the episodes until May, talk of a third series is inevitable.

While speaking at the PBS session for MASTERPIECE MYSTERY! which airs SHERLOCK under that banner, actress Lara Pulver who plays Holmes foil Irene Adler in Series 2, spoke about the show’s impact her native U.K.

“It’s resonating hugely within the British audiences, which is very exciting and there’s more scope for these two characters [Holmes and Adler],” admits Pulver.

As for whether Benedict Cumberbatch will return for a Series 3 (he’s got a hot feature film career starring in both WAR HOUSE,TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY and nabbing a pivotal role in the upcoming STAR TREK 2), the actor, speaking via satellite, teases about his interest in returning.

“You might say, it’s quite hard to make it back after the end of the last episode,” says Cumberbatch trying to be mysterious. “I’m going to only tease you with, ‘I would like to.’”

After that statement, MASTERPIECE executive producer Rebecca Eaton adds, “Yes, he will be. Yes.” Then she looks at Cumberbatch on the monitor and adds, “Right Benedict?”